The Devil Wears Zara: Anna Wintour’s Latest Met Gala Mess

If anybody out there in Hollywood happens to be working on a Devil Wears Prada 3 script, have we got a plotline for you.

It’s got an imperious but struggling magazine editrix. A billionaire fashion heiress. A disgraced British designer attempting an outlandish comeback. And, best of all, a wildly extravagant ballroom scene bound to go spectacularly wrong.

The Miranda Priestly character, of course, is Condé Nast creative director Anna Wintour, who lately seems to be stepping on one rake after another as she stumbles toward next year’s Met Gala. After last May’s fiasco — sanitation workers are still scraping away those “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” posters anti-Amazon protesters plastered around midtown and the Upper East Side — Wintour, 76, promised to scale things back: a smaller guest list, less ostentatious excess and, ideally, fewer demonstrators lunging at attendees on the red carpet.

Then, bafflingly, she went and picked John Galliano as the 2027 Gala’s centerpiece. You know, the flamboyant 65-year-old designer who made Dior the most histrionic house in fashion — in 2004, he sent models down a runway dressed as towering Egyptian pharaohs — until he got fired and canceled in 2011 for an antisemitic and racist tirade in a Paris café so vile, even France considered it a hate crime.

Big shocker, Wintour’s pick did not last long. On Aug. 31, after mounting pressure from Jewish groups, Met donors and New York politicians, Galliano announced on Instagram that “with great sadness” he had decided it was “best” for the Costume Institute if his celebration “did not take place at this time.”

But here’s where things get even stickier for Wintour. Galliano’s current gig is at Zara, the fast-fashion behemoth where he’s been charged with “reauthoring” some of the brand’s signature looks. And while nothing has been announced, well-placed fashion sources tell Rambling that Zara was lining up to be one of the financial sponsors for next year’s ball. (Amazon, unsurprisingly, is skipping 2027.)

Zara hasn’t responded to THR‘s request for comment — Gala sponsorships traditionally aren’t announced until late fall — but there are breadcrumbs. For one thing, there’s that conspicuous six-page feature on Zara chair Marta Ortega Pérez — the 42-year-old daughter of 90-year-old founder Amancio Ortega — in Vogue‘s September issue. Granted, Pérez isn’t an unworthy profile subject, but six pages is an awful lot of Vogue for a fashion executive — a few Annie Leibovitz portraits shy of first-lady treatment.

If Zara really was planning to help pay for next year’s Gala, it may be another rake in Wintour’s face. It’s hard to imagine the company sticking around after its headline designer has been booted from the party. So who will be writing the checks for Gala 2027? Will there even be one?

All the Met will say is that plans “will be announced at a later date.”

This story appeared in the Sept. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.